Goldoolins - Songs of the Turly Crio

Olamale



Rating: 7/10

Back in the day, when I was young and defenseless, had I limited myself to the folksy vision of Leonard Cohen, or even the Fairport Convention - great, juicy music, mind you - I’d be now pushing up daisies. It’s obvious that a person's horizons will broaden as they obsessively dig deep into the underground, and sometimes it doesn't hurt to mine the good, sweet popular streams. From the dubious edges of dub music to the surrogated patterns of house and techno, whenever a person is ready to disobey the premises of their old vinyl records, there exists a brave new world of music to delve into.

Suffice to say, autochthons music is the best greeting card for a certain people or place. Over the course of less than a year, I had the chance to extract audio pleasure from two bands hailing from Israel – the first being Tel-Aviv-based Rendezvous, a beautiful jazz ensemble that merges tradition with some innovative, risky steps in improvisation, and the second discovery is, of course, the trio for which these lines are being written.

Goldoolins is a musical trinity made up of O.D. Goldbart, Tadlik Doolin, and E.T. Doolin. Tadlik and E.T. are a married couple, O.D. is a pal, and their J.K. Rowling-esque name is a result of the contraction of their last names: Goldbart + Doolin = Goldoolin. This trio’s musical radar is capable of homing in on and incorporating major influences, both throughout the history of time and the spread of musical genres, two avenues that are not always dissociated from each other. Renaissance music comes to the fore as an immediate highlight, but the burlesque, baroque nuances also flow through songs like "The Man He Killed" or "Find Her", the latter deftly rubbing Cat Stevens’ G-spot at times.

The dizzying, colorful encounter that is "Country Traveler" exposes Songs of the Turly Crio's folk roots, and it has everything to make most Americana troubadours blush. For me, it’s like Joanna Newsom maintained an outer space chat with A Hawk and a Hacksaw, and decided to play a leading role in Emir Kusturica’s next flick, "Country Traveler" being part of the resulting score.

The album's best cut is, however, the only song fully sung in Hebrew, "Sheva Shanim", which translates as "seven years". I have the feeling I would like these Songs of the Turly Crio better had the record been fully delivered in their native idiom. "Bed of Wood" and "Song For Dodo" are pale partners in crime when opposed to my aforementioned loved one.

Goldbart and the Doolinses play all the instruments presented on Turly Crio themselves, with the exception of a brass section, a cello and a flute. The array of audio postcards is discharged from acoustic and classical guitars (including a "hollow-body guitar"), a piano, a harpsichord, an accordion, and a kalimba and percussion, but also from a zither, a glockenspiel, a mouth harp, a mandola, and an upright bass. The trio possess an obvious musical dexterity, technically speaking, and the prowess of the primary players extends to the guest appearances in the record, from the cellist to the trombonist, the oboist, the trumpeter, and the violinist. All around, the playing on Songs of the Turly Crio is solid.

Since their formation in 2004, the Goldoolins have been invited to play at festivals, as well as folk clubs, radio shows, and coffee houses (the perfect place to really deflower their essence), and their performances have grown inside them this second egg, the follow-up to their eponymous debut. But it’s not just about the music, it’s also about the extreme care put into the artwork – the cover shows the band photographed next to some medieval ruins –, and the way syllables are expelled from their mouths. The album's title is also great but a little obvious, kind of reminding me of (Smog)’s Dongs of Sevotion.

Although the peaks are high for Goldoolins, there are low points on this otherwise stainless release, notably the poultry’s lament that "Dusty" encloses: a drifting, saccharine-driven number that will erode the shiniest teeth on the planet; and, again, their tendency to write/sing in Shakespeare’s mother tongue. Nevertheless, Songs of the Turly Crio is so challenging, and fulfills almost every parameter of my music’s barometer, that I must start paying more attention to the Tel-Aviv connection, if there’s any, and its geographical branches (the Goldoolins hail from a place called Rehovot).

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Hell Demonio - Greatest Hits

Robotradio Records



Rating: 7/10

This band is a joke. But luckily, it’s a good one. They kind of confirm my long held suspicion that the best musicians are those who don’t take themselves too seriously. Take Ween or The Butthole Surfers, for example. OK, maybe I shouldn’t go that far. But hey, it’s rock n’ roll and I like it, when played loud and vicariously. In a time when rock indeed feels locked into mainstream circuitry (Franz Ferdinand, Blood Brothers, etc.), Hell Demonio try to hammer round guitar riffs into square holes, and somehow they get them to work.

Punk rockers, with a tendency to accelerate the metal element in their music, still strike a nerve with me. And I know they shouldn’t, especially when my cup of tea goes way beyond the jazz/hip-hop/downtempo intersection. But from "Metal Maximizer" to "The Beamy Nihilistic Sword", this 15-minute EP adds a hell lot of confusion to the grotesque debacle which the rock scene has turned into. Coming from the unsuspected Verona, in Italy, Hell Demonio scratches the dirt off your fingernails by tossing out piercing guitar shards, here and there adorned with a resounding (and hilarious) cowbell.

Not the most appropriate record to sit crosslegged in the hoods with, Greatest Hits is nevertheless a heavyweight cluster that mixes haired riffage with a drum kit just as powerful (but not as inventive) as Dave Grohl’s. "Darwin and Me" is an ultra heavy cut whose sonic arteries seem to have hardened terminally, and put the ensemble next to others that have coloured my darkest days – notably The Black Halos, Vue, and even Mudhoney. Going through these songs is therefore like watching a dream whose plot takes you backwards to the time when your face used to be just itchy spots.

Numbers like "Reagans n’ Roses" or "Ass of Base" have anti-wrinkle benefits not to be dismissed, and represent a bizarre turn of events for someone whose over caffeinated mornings are the rule, not the exception. In fact, all these tracks rank high on the Impress Your Friends By Stealing An Old Lady front, but I wouldn’t go as far as hosting the canonisation of Hell Demonio as the next rock saviors.

Besides, I believe these guys (all named after the band name itself – Hello Demonio n.1 Guitar, … n.2 Bass, … n.3 Voice, … n.4 Drums, and … n.5 Black Beauty Cowbell) are the sort of people who cared not a jot that their musical source dried out tomorrow. And you’ve got to love the decompressed element to their sound! It’s so difficult to sound simple, but they end up doing just that. I respect it.

http://www.lostatsea.net/review.phtml?id=152018959243d947c0170e1